


Witch and Spinner

by Strummer_Pinks



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bae being adorable and toddlery, Belle has a personality, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Milah is not completely unsympathetic, Okay maybe Milah is a real bitch, Papafire!, Rumple's sucktastic universe because tiny judgemental towns seriously blow!, Spinner!Rum Witch!Belle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strummer_Pinks/pseuds/Strummer_Pinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being falsely exiled from her kingdom by her husband Gaston for witchcraft, Belleflower finds a place for herself in a small rural village brewing medicines and selling herbs at the market. All she wants is to be left alone, but this changes after she meets a disgraced spinner at the market who has been shunned by the village for his crimes of desertion and cowardice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They let him take the empty stall at the farthest edge of the market, close to Belleflower’s own. There had been some argument among the members of the market about letting him take it and that was the first Belleflower, the village “witch” and herb seller had heard of him. No one liked to talk of him, for his presence was a disgrace. They were only considering his application because the village market was failing. More men left for war and few returned shrinking the once vibrant market week by week. Few outsiders traveled to their village for market day now, where once their bustling market had been the chief attraction of the area. Anything to bring in more business could not be turned away. Even if no one came to buy the spinner’s wares, at least people might be attracted to gawk or throw things at him, someone suggested in all seriousness. 

Belleflower tried to follow the thread of the other marketers’ conversations on the topic, but they spoke a dialect different from the one she’d grown up with and many of their words and inflections were strange to her ears. One word that reoccurred again and again in reference to the spinner was “Rumplestiltskin” which, if she translated it correctly in her mind came out as “rattly stick-legs” or some other such nonsense and she began to despair a bit at how poor her grasp of their dialect still was, even after two years among them. 

On the morning of the spinner’s arrival at the market weeks later Belleflower was there at sun-up. She always arrived early so she had time to read a bit of her book before the market really got into full swing. 

Belleflower didn’t know much about the spinner, only lately returned from war, only that he had not always been spinner, as spinning was long considered a woman’s profession in this particular village. She had been gathering information on the man in her own observant fashion for weeks now and had found out quite a bit. She knew he had started out as a tailor, had gone to the war and come back in disgrace after being hobbled and branded for desertion and cowardice. 

No one told her this, because few people ever talked to her. She was supposedly a witch after all, and the folk of the village only came to her when they were in desperate straights, all other solutions exhausted. They bought her herbs and tonics in the village square on market day, of course and saw her then, but what really kept bread on her table were the visitors who came in secret; the midwives in need of her special assistance to augment their meagre skills for a particularly difficult birth, the old men unable to couple with young wives in search of something to restore their lost vigor, the parents worried over children who did not speak, people wishing to locate a lost loved one or know the wishes of the dead. These supplicants came to her furtively, on their own, at dusk when it was easier to pretend that their neighbours could not see the direction their footsteps led them. 

She could not help all of them, all these needy people. Sometimes the problem was too large even for her understanding, sometimes there was nothing to be done and sometimes, she’d remember something that particular villager had done to her and simply not help out of spite. Usually, though she could find something within her powers to ease their suffering, at least a little bit, if not cure it entirely. And there was so much suffering, even here. An outsider would be surprised how many desperate souls could be contained in one small village, thought Belle. 

She lived outside the town. Not her choice, but no one would rent her a place within the village limits, once they discovered her exile from her former town for witchcraft. She told herself she did not care. She’d had enough of people and their mendacity and traitorous dealings in her old life, especially of men and the way they treated women. Still, this did not stop her from being curious about the goings on amid the people in the village, the feuds and scandals and petty thefts. She kept her eyes and ears open whenever she was at market to what the sellers at the other stalls would say and in this way formed a kind of patchwork picture of the different people in the village. Their stories entertained her and she thought of them frequently, but in a detached sort of way, the way she thought of the characters in her books that she had taken with her upon her exile from her ancestral home. Their antics amused her and they kept her company in her loneliness, but they existed only in her mind, and could not judge or hurt her in the flesh. And this was how she preferred it. 

She was reading still, as the spinner arrived to set up his pitch. He moved in a hoppity sort of way on a pair of wood crutches, a bulging sack of wool and spindles of thread on his back.

Few villagers ever saw him. Lacking a man’s proper courage, it seemed fitting to them that he should remain at home like a woman, tending to his child and his chickens and spinning thread, while his wife went out to work at the sailor’s tavern in the village. 

Belleflower saw the spinner’s wife Milah following him now, pushing a hand cart which held a spinning wheel and a small crib in front of her, while a baby rode on a sling at her back. 

It was agreed in the village that it was quite a pity that such a beautiful woman should have had the misfortune to marry such an embarrassment of a man. They wondered that he had been selfish enough to remain alive after his disgrace, instead of doing away with himself as he should have, leaving her free to marry another untainted by cowardice. 

Belleflower had met the spinner’s wife before and disliked her. Milah was tall and raven haired and people talked of her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the county. That wasn’t all they said of her. Rumour had it that she drank with the sailors who came to the tavern and did other things with them besides while her husband was away at war. Belleflower did not judge this. Many women, hungry and alone while their husbands were away found themselves in such circumstances. Belleflower herself had done it once or twice for shelter and warmth on a cold winter’s night as she travelled, destitute after her exile from her home. A man would not be judged in the same way for sporting with women, after all. No, the reason Belleflower disliked her, was because one day, on her way home from the tavern with some newfound sailor “friends,” Milah had come upon Belleflower fetching water from the well, and told the sailors of Belleflower’s reputation. Amongst themselves Milah and her companions had decided they needed to “purify” the witch Belleflower by dunking her in “holy water.” It had been a chilly day and Belleflower had not appreciated their jeers as they tossed her into a horse’s freezing cold water trough. She had nearly caught ill from the cold. Not to mention, in the process they had also spilled the water buckets she’d already carried halfway through the village to the ground, forcing her to go back once more to the well. By the time she returned to her little cabin in the woods, it was dark and dangerous animals were about. Belleflower knew Milah could have carelessly caused her death without ever even realizing it. 

Belleflower now wondered if the woman ever felt badly for anything she did at all, as she watched Milah unload the handcart. There was something angry about her as she slammed down the spinning wheel beside the stall, then a low stool beside it and finally the wooden crib, seemingly oblivious to the spinner, who backed awkwardly away, desperately trying to stay out of her path. Milah did not look at him, as together they arranged spindles of different coloured thread in separate baskets on the table. Carelessly, she jostled his injured leg as she went by. When he gasped at the contact, Belleflower didn’t miss the look of disgust Milah aimed his way. 

The spinner opened his mouth like he wanted to protest, but then just looked away, all the fight drained out of him. He looked down at the ground as if he wanted to disappear straight into the earth.

Belleflower knew that sort of look. She had seen it often enough, etched in her own face as it stared back at her out of the glass in Gaston’s suite of rooms at the palace. 

The spinner muttered something softly to his wife when they were done arranging the items on the table. The woman rolled her eyes and with a martyred sigh, took his crutches in one hand and helped him lower himself down to the stool with the other. Then she took the babe off her back and thrust it into his waiting arms before stalking off in the direction of the tavern. 

“Wait!” he cried at her receding form and Belleflower could tell the woman heard him by how she paused in her walk, her shoulders stiffening in response, before resuming course. 

“Milah please, I need the wool!” But Milah just kept on walking, straight backed against the wind.

Belleflower wondered what he was talking about regarding the wool. She watched as the spinner sighed and put the baby down in gently in its crib. Then he pulled himself shakily upright with the aid of one crutch and the ledge of the market stand. 

Belleflower watched him from behind her book, helplessly intrigued. She had never seen a Hobbled Man such as him before, one who was still alive that is. 

But she had seen a man hobbled. As a lady of the court of Avon, wed to Sir Gaston, a knight of the realm, she had been taken to watch the punishment of runaway soldiers. She sat in her box with the other minor nobility, next to her new husband as she watched this strange custom, so new to her eyes. They did not do such things where she came from, but then, she was the daughter of a simple village merchant, unaccustomed to the ways of town nobility. People threw eggs and rotten fruit as the guards brought the deserters up in chains upon the platform, the same one, Gaston helpfully supplied. upon which people were beheaded once a year for the most grevious crimes in the land. Once the war began and desertion became the more common crime, these gatherings in the public square occurred once every four months, and then once every two, as the ranks of deserters doubled as the war dragged on. 

Belleflower had responded eagerly to Gaston letting her go with him into town. She hated being shut up in the court so much, that even on such a strange premise, she was thrilled to emerge from behind the walls of court. She had been made eager herself, by Sir Gaston’s enthusiasm for the event, the proper punishment of these craven cowardly traitors, who had done as well as to betray their people to the ogres by running. Belleflower had shouted and thrown rotten tomatoes at the stage with the rest of the crowd, pleased to engage in her first bit of unlady-like behavior in months, waiting in anticipation for the irredeemable, moustache twirling traitors to come before them. 

Finally, the cowardly deserters were brought forth out of the crowd. What she saw shocked her to the core; a straggling line of poor, starving peasants, chained together by their wrists, with nothing but rags around their waists to cover their nakedness. There were marks of beatings on their bodies, their ribs stuck out painfully and their feet were bare. They shivered upon the platform, whether in fear or cold, one could not say. 

There were things on the stage, Belleflower saw, as Gaston gleefully pointed them out to her. The rack of pokers, now placed hissing in the fire that the guards were banking would be for branding, he explained pleasantly to her. The special table that two burly guards brought on stage with the ropes on either end would be where they tied down the criminal and the huge mallet that the captain of the palace guard was swinging around on stage to the cheers of the audience, would be for hobbling the prisoners’ legs, Sir Gaston grinned. 

“They won’t be running away anymore after this,” he laughed heartily and slapped his thigh as if this was the grandest joke of the season. 

Belleflower felt the gorge rise in her thoat as she watched the former runaways wince every time the captain of the palace guard swung the mallet in their direction. The crowd laughed as the prisoners jumped back, their knees knocking together in terror. 

Suddenly, she felt trapped and knew she had to get away. She inched off towards the edge of their box. “I- I have to pass my waters,” she muttered to her husband, with pleading eyes. 

Sir Gaston scowled at her and grabbed her forcibly by the arm. “That can wait. How would it look to them if you abandoned our box now? Don’t you know these peasants look to us, their superiors, to demonstrate full respect for our land’s laws and punishments. If you turn away from this stern example of the king’s justice, what’s to keep this rabble from turning away as well? How will we keep order in our country then? We’ll have a revolt on our hands, just like Roenburg did! I caught some of these men after all!” exclaimed Gaston. “It is the responsibility of myself and my household to see that they are punished according. And you are part of my household now.” 

Belleflower’s stomach turned within her once again. “You- you caught those men?” 

“Half a dozen at least!” announced Sir Gaston proudly. “It’s easy to pick them off because we knights can use horses to run them down. All they can use are their feet to run.” Gaston’s eyes focused on a new movement on the stage. “Which if I’m not mistaken, they won’t have use of for much longer! Ha! And here comes the Captain right enough!” 

Belleflower tried to look away as the screams began, but Gaston’s rough hands held her head. “Watch Belleflower!” he growled. “Are you a mewling little girl or a grown noblewoman? Mind your duty!” Belleflower was frightened. So she watched. How bad could it be, really? The first soldier was branded with a hot poker on his hand. The Captain held up the man’s limp hand to the crowd so they could all see the letter “C” for coward burned into the flesh. The crowd cheered. Belleflower kept quiet, motionless in Gaston’s strangulating hold. 

“Now for the best part,” Gaston growled gleefully, sounding more blood thirsty beast than man. 

The branded coward was held down over the table and tied firmly with the ropes. Belleflower wanted to look away, but Gaston held her head fast, keeping her eyes open with his thick, sweaty fingers. An assistant stretched out the coward’s right leg. The crowd gave the countdown, 1, 2, 3 and the Captain of the guard, Gaston’s best friend who ate at their table every week, brought the heavy mallet down on the deserter’s foot and ankle smashing his bones. The man screamed.

Finally, the Captain stopped and cocked an ear to the crowd. “So what do you say?” he asked them with a grin, clearly basking in the attention. “Do you think he’s had enough?”

“NOOOO!” the crowd yelled back.

And smiling from ear to ear, the Captain swung back the mallet and kept on going. 

Belleflower gasped and Gaston let her go at last, so he could cheer the activity on with the rest of his mates. Then a peddler came by with a beer cart. Although she knew Gaston would probably beat her later, Belleflower could stay by him no longer. She had never loathed another person as much as she loathed Gaston and the Captain of the guard in that moment. She slipped behind the purple cloth covering the back of their box as her husband paid the beerseller and ran back to the palace. 

Weeks later, still traumatized by what she had seen, unable to get the images out of her mind, she sought some relief by asking Umberly, her husband’s coachman about the fates of the deserters she’d seen on stage. She had kept her eye out for them around the town. When she was not let outside, she had asked her maids about them, but no one seemed to have a clue as to what had become of them. Umberly, looked surprised to hear her ask the question.

“Why they’re probably all dead by now, Milady,” he said to her, as if this immutable fact was as obvious as the blueness of the sky.

“What?”

“When they get off the platform the crowd usually tears ‘em to piece,” he nodded firmly. 

“Others who make it out drown themselves in the river, rather than live with the shame.”

Belleflower grew pale. “And the rest?”

“Well, you seen the pounding them give ‘em on scaffold miss, all those broken bones, and no doctor or apothecary around here will touch them, obviously. Open wounds like that, not cleaned out or treated or anything, quickly get infected. The cowards get blood fever and die from their punishments and we are usually well rid of the vermin within the month,” he replied with a nod of finality, as if this would set her mind at ease. 

Belleflower gaped at him in horror. 

Later, she scoured the town for survivors of the punishments, so guilty did she feel for her household’s involvement in the matter. She felt guilty for her own behavior too, for she was not completely innocent. She knew now she could have stood up, could have protested or begged clemency for the poor wretches, but at the moment of horror such thoughts had fled from her shocked mind. She wished she had been braver, but she was too ashamed to embarrass herself in front of her new husband’s house, too afraid of his reprisals in the bedroom to speak. All her pretty book-words had failed her in her shock at the town’s savagery, and all she had done for the victims of the king’s “justice” was turn her pretty face away from their misery. She felt like she had shamed herself and her departed father, he who had always believed strongly in the power of compassion and the equal humanity of all people whatever their station. 

She supposed she should not have been surprised that upon questioning people in the town, no one came forward to tell her what happened to the punished deserters or the names of the disgraced men. Perhaps it was because she was known to be the lady of the knight who’d captured them and had them so disciplined in the first place, or the shame of the villagers concerning what they had done as part of the mob. 

There was nothing she could find at the time to counteract what the coachman had said, that all the hobbled men were now dead. How could a man in such straights survive?

But here he was--- a hobbled man, alive and fairly well, with a wife and a child and a trade in the village. 

Umberly had been wrong. And if he was wrong about the punished deserters, what more could he and the other folk of her old home have been wrong about? The things they said about her after she failed to produce her husband a heir; that she was a disgraced woman, polluted, cursed, barren, worthless, a witch—— that a woman like her would never find another man to marry again, that she would never have children, that she would die outside the castle walls without a man’s protection, that she was fated to be miserable for the rest of her cursed days and never happy even for a moment, ever again—maybe they were wrong about that, too. Tears formed in her eyes as she watched the spinner and imagined her future, of surviving and maybe even being happy, unspeakably grateful to him for just being there. 

The spinner, meanwhile was not unaware of herb-seller’s eyes on him. He felt hot under her gaze as he struggled to gather up the large basket of wool he was to spin that market day in one hand, while controlling the crutch that kept him upright with the other. He walked clumsily with the help of his stick-legs now (hence the oh-so amusing nickname the villagers had bestowed him with), and had been forced out of the tailoring trade because he could no longer flit nimbly about his clients as before, measuring them for all the beautiful clothes he would sew for them. He could still sew, of course, there was nothing wrong with his hands, other than the superficial mark of a coward’s brand on his right. Had he been injured under other circumstances, he might have hired a boy to fit and measure his clients in his stead and continued on with his business. Before the war he had talked of hiring on an apprentice, but now no one would apprentice their boy to a coward and expect him to take orders from a disgrace of a man. Soon upon his return, he was forced to sell the tailor shop. To add further to his humiliation, no one in the village would pay more than a pittance for it. 

He was not unaccustomed to people like the herbseller staring at him. They either stared openly or quickly averted their gaze. He was used to this and claimed to himself he did not care. Stilt-legs indeed! Well he knew the truth about them, didn’t he? Would they have chosen so differently that day he’d run away? "I may be a coward," he thought when he was at his fiercest, "but at least I do not hide what I am. Not like you lot. Hypocrites. Committing their awful deeds in the anonymity of the group, then melting back into their cozy homes as the group dispersed, safe from any risk of harm or reprisal from authorities." Nobody cared what the mob did to take out its aggravations on a hobbled, half-starved deserter. This was not bravery, attacking someone who could not easily get away or defend themselves. This was truly the coward’s way. The only difference between him and them he came to realize, was that they had the luxury he no longer had, the luxury of pretending the word coward did not apply to them. 

In time he came to understand, that this was why the villagers looked away when he first arrived home. He had tried to be friendly, to meet their eyes. These people whom he’d known all his life, what had happened for them to suddenly be so repulsed by him? He tried at first to study himself in the glass, certain he must have been horribly disfigured somehow, only to discover nothing particularly hideous about his person. He was neat and clean, as he’d always been, a small, ordinary looking man whose manner never gave offense. Only his hobbled foot was rather ugly, he had to admit, but he kept it tucked away from public view in its sock and boot, and the sight of it bothered no one but himself. No, he realized, they looked away because he reminded them of that thing inside themselves that they didn’t want to acknowledge. Their own cowardice and fear. They recognized that part of themselves in him. Their weakness and secret suspicion that were they really in his place they would have done exactly the same. And really, who likes to be reminded of that?

Oh yes, he knew the feelings behind their eyes, the fear, anger, disgust, curiosity, even pity on rarer occasions, he thought bitterly. He knew them all and no longer cared. 

So he didn’t bother to look up to see which of these feelings told on the herbseller’s countenance as she watched him lower himself carefully back down to his stool to spin. 

If he had, he might have been surprised.

For when Belleflower looked at him, all she felt was hope.


	2. The Spinner is Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The spinner stops coming to the market and Belleflower hears a vile rumour.
> 
> XXXXXXX

After the appearance of the hobbled man at the market, Belleflower’s heart felt lighter than it had for a long, long time. Now she looked for him every market day, attentive to the distinctive sound of a squeaky, wooden-wheeled handcart and stick-legs scrabbling over stone.

They’d exchange a friendly hello every week now, though so shy was he, he barely looked up to meet her eye. It was easier for him to talk when his eyes and hands were busy with the wheel. He lost some of his self-consciousness then. They talked of simple, things; the weather and the local goings on in the village, but just that small interaction was enough to take the edge off the despair that threatened to overwhelm her, alone in her small cottage, awake in the night when the dreams and loneliness came on too strongly. She had a friend and at least that was something. She just hoped he wasn’t too intimidated by her over-eager demeanor, uncertain status in the village and poor command of the local idiom, and continued to speak with her. If even he stopped talking to her she didn’t know what she’d do.

And then one day he stopped coming to the market.

 

His wife too, had gone missing from both the marketplace and, more alarmingly, the local tavern. It was said… Belle tried not to listen to what was said. She knew people had ways of twisting a woman’s fate into ugly rumours. Belle of all people knew the things desperation and limited choices could do. She herself had been victim of cruel, gossip enough in her old life not to give credence to any of the talk of the town, bored people would say anything for a moments drama and entertainment she told herself, and yet—and yet, behind the scandalized whispers, was there not a kernel of truth? Having met Milah and observed her, she had to admit she wouldn’t put it past her to do what they said she had done—left her young child and her husband to take up with a sea captain and sail off to ports unknown. 

She watched for him in concern with each passing week but still he did not show. In her cold, lonely bed at night with the heated brick just barely keeping her toes warm with her breath visible in the air, she thought about him and herself and whether any of them would survive the coming winter and the inhumanity of people to each other. 

She thought of her marriage to Gaston, and how she’d prayed for some kind soul to see her distress and extend a helping hand. Not even that really, even just to be seen, seen truly as she was and not as it was convenient for her to seem to them and have the truth of her life acknowledged, even that would have been enough. 

Her existence was precarious enough in the village already. It was a risk to her survival to allow herself to become even more of an outcast than she already was. But why had she survived at all, if she lived only to assist the injustices she had endured to simply perpetuate themselves further? 

If she’d kept herself alive this long it wasn’t to just sit idly by while the cruel and the rich and the strong, justified their behavior as they took what they wanted, while innocents died for the crime of being outcast and injured and poor.

Though the world might mock her for believing so. In her heart of hearts Belle believed she was alive because the world needed her, it needed a hero, and even if she was the most unlikely knight-errant ever, she could serve the greater good in at least some limited capacity, couldn’t she? 

Somehow, in the labyrinthian twists and turns of her mind’s logic, the spinner’s unlikely survival was linked now to her own. Seeing him there in the market had been like a beacon of hope, guiding her into port, a lone boat out at sea. If he could survive all they must have done to him, if he could have managed to escape, she’d thought, then surely she could too. 

But now, what had initially felt like a sign of hope, had flipped to hope’s opposite. Because if he couldn’t survive, her mind reasoned sneakily within her, then maybe she couldn’t either.

There was only one thing to do now. 

She packed a bag of bread and cheese and went out to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a while since I updated this fic... (understatement of the year I guess).  
> Sorry?  
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!


	3. What Happened to the Spinner

 

Rumple, Milah and Little Bae had been coming to the market for weeks now. Though their wares had not been quite the smashing success that would turn their fortunes around in a week, the way Milah had hoped, they hadn’t made out too badly. It was nice to have a little something extra to eat for the next few days. 

Winter would be coming soon, Rumple and he didn’t have much fat on his body to fight the coming chill. The elders had said war would make a man out of him when he left. He had always been small, but setting out to the front, he looked forward to returning a well muscled hero to make every female head in the village look his way, and give every man pause before daring to shake a fist in his direction. 

The way he looked when he returned home, gave his daydream the ironic cast of some cruel god’s sadistic joke. 

First there were the meagre rations of hard biscuit they served the former farmboys in the military camp, then the berries and roots he ate while on the run as a deserter. When he was captured and jailed for fleeing, the food became scarcer and even worse in quality. Finally, injured and sick and begging for scraps to keep him going as he made his way home, sometimes drinking from puddles of rainwater, when he hadn’t the strength to drag himself to a pump or a well, stealing meat from dogs and rubbish tips his limbs had grown nearly as thin as the sticks he supported them with. He’d fed better since returning to the village, but they were still poor and the ogres were still blockading the trade routes. In such conditions meat was rare. Winter was coming and even in the slightly cool fall air, Rumple felt the morning chill more keenly than before. 

Milah moved quickly around their hut gathering the supplies they’d need to put in the handcart. She said nothing to Rumple, but the resentment she felt at being the one who had to bear the brunt of the labor required to push the cart into town and the embarrassment it caused her was nearly visible. 

For his part Rumple did the best he could to stay out of her way, trying to get Bae dressed to go out. 

Dressing Bae was no longer the easy task it had been when Rumple first arrived back home. Now Bae was toddling around on his own with surprising speed for one so small. 

Rumple still had size in his corner though. Sitting on the rag rug by the fire, Rumple tackled Bae playfully to the ground as he rushed past in a flash of naked bottom.  
They tousled, mock wrestling as Bae giggled and squirmed. Finally Rumple managed to get Bae’s chubby little legs into their scratchy woolen leggings. 

“No me! No me! Itchy!” whined Bae as he scratched his legs through the fabric.

“Oh quit your whinging. See I’m wearing them too, just like you.”

“Papa too!” cheered Bae. 

“That’s right, see we match.” 

After this Bae stopped grumbling about the leggings although he couldn’t help scratching. Rumple sympathized. The damn things were bloody itchy, but they couldn’t afford anything, but the coarsest wool for their own clothes. 

Next he put on Bae’s little boots, doing up the laces with double knots so Bae couldn’t pull them off and throw them off the cart as he liked to do sometimes. 

Rumple had fast clever fingers and always got Bae’s boots done lickety split before the little tot had time to fuss. One thing he could still do better than anyone, at least, he thought with a small smile. 

“Papa boots too! Papa boots!” shouted Bae, who knew the routine.

“Right,” said Rum, stalling a bit. His bad foot was very stiff that morning. 

“Papa boots!” insisted Bae, pulling on his fingers.  
Rumple put on his left boot and laced it up. 

Then, with a glance round to make sure Milah was looking elsewhere, he took a deep breath and tried to put on the right one.


	4. Remembrance of Things Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And after much delay due to my hectic schedule, Rumple tries to put on his left boot and has some flashbacks and thinks about his life and what brought him to this point. What is it with me and flashbacks? I just realized there is a flashback within a flashback in here. 
> 
> This is what I love about fiction, the elasticization of time. You can make a moment stre-e-e-e-etch or collapse ten years into a single sentence. Sweet sweet fiction. Probably all the "current timeline" action in this chapter would take about a minute in real time, but the memories and the emotions he's having just stretch the fuck away! 
> 
> XXXXXXXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for you for this one-- some violence and whumping (?) (I have never used this term before, I just looked it up to make sure I am using it correctly) of poor Rum. He definitely goes through some rough stuff, remembering about getting his leg busted up by sick-ass executioner guy weilding "the hand of justice."  
> Also some non-PC treatment of a character with a disability because some people are assholes. 
> 
> Angst, obviously and Bae being ridiculously sweet the way only a two year old can, (I assume right after he goes and pees on the rug or something to keep it all in balance). 
> 
> Anyway, here goes. 
> 
> And did I mention THANK YOU THANK YOU everyone for you awesome and completely inexplicable support of this fic two years after I originally posted that one orphan chapter. It's you guys who brought me back to finish this and got me thinking about the story again and feeling confident in my ability to write it and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I thank you one and all from the bottom of my heart. Seriously, I absolutely love you guys. Your kudos and comments are what keep my engine running! Much love!!!! Kiss kiss,  
> Strummer_Pinks
> 
> XXXXXXX

Rumplestilskin knew a thing or two about self-deception. Stitching together intricate fantasies in his head to escape the unhappy realities of his existence was as natural a skill to him as sewing and spinning thread. The comforting fictions he spun for himself about his missing mother and frequently absent, perpetually inebriated musician father had sustained him through a childhood of poverty and bullying. 

Other fantasies and imaginary futures had helped him, a poor tailor, lure Milah, the most desirable lass in the village into his arms and bed with outsized dreams of great wealth, as dressmaker to the queen, making clothes for the court in the beneath the dazzling spires of the capitol. The other men resented him for it, believing he’d sold his soul for some magical love potion or warlock’s sexual secret, never realizing the truth was far more prosaic—a talent for imaginative invention and the perceptivity to see that a woman could have dreams beyond her immediate surroundings or living in a slightly bigger hovel with more than one cow. These dreams of Milah’s weren’t hard to ferret it out if one only asked her and were easy to guess, not being too different than his own. They had dreamed together once, of a future beyond the village, of education for their children and worlds of art and finery upon which to feast eyes bored of sheep and fields and dull one-story hovels. 

To put it mildly, she’d aspired above her station, and he had too, putting so much energy into those dreams feeding them like he fed the needle and the loom and the wheel, until their promising future was almost tactile in his hand, a cloth he just knew he’d be able to tailor to achieve their hearts’ desire. 

Going to war was just another stitch to bring the garment together. He’d return a hero, with prizes of gold, taken from the enemy’s strongholds, enough gold to move to the capitol, open his own tailor shop, buy the finest dyed silks and pay a dozen apprentices.

And now it was like he’d woken up in a nightmare the exact opposite of his dream, and no matter how he tried to bend it to take the shape of their new circumstances and convince his heavy heart that it was all still possible, he knew now that a dream could only bend so much before it broke and recent events had strained even his own vaunted talents in self-deception. 

For months, every time he felt anxious about the condition of his foot, he’d reassured himself in his mind that it would be alright in time, this was all part of the healing process. 

It wasn’t so difficult to convince himself that it was improving. There were encouraging signs. For instance he could put his weight on it now with only a little discomfort, at least compared to the nauseating, near passing-out pain he’d experienced when he tried to walk on it initially. 

But even then he knew, he’d broken his arm once as a child falling out of a tree and remembered roughly how long it took to heal back to nearly normal. The time for the bones to knit together had long since passed. The changes he’d noticed, that he’d tried to convince himself were just temporary parts of the healing process, were not going away. 

The hobbled leg had healed up shorter than the other, significantly so. Standing up straight on his sticks, his bad foot didn’t even touch the ground. It twisted in sharply at the ankle, too. There seemed little point in the discomfort of a shoe, when a thick woolen sock with a leather pad sewn into the bottom served him far better for everyday use.

Market days were different, though. One had to make at least a bit of an effort at being presentable. Rumple was keenly aware of the importance of keeping up appearances. He had no wish to give the town council an excuse to revoke his marketing license, especially when he had obtained it by such a narrow margin of the council’s vote.   
He was worried, too, of giving Milah yet another reason to despair of him and his many failures. Some days he felt he lived or died on the strength of her comments. With so many people against him now, a criticism from her could fall with the strength of an ogre’s fist on his shoulders, a she was the only one, who still bothered to really talk to him. 

They never talked about what had happened in the early days when he’d first returned to the village, when they’d tried to convince people he’d simply been injured in battle. Milah was the only who knew the truth then. He stilled hoped he’d be able to claim a veteran’s pension. Even that little bit of money might have proved a sop to Milah’s fury. He had been truthful with her at least, much as it hurt him. 

He had underestimated the intelligence and mistrust of his fellow villagers, in thinking they’d buy his explanations so readily. Somehow, they suspected him from the beginning. In retrospect it really had been the height of arrogance to beg the basket of bread, traditionally saved by the soft-hearted baker for veterans of the wars. In his defense all he could claim was that he’d been hungry and had he not asked, then that too would have roused suspicion. 

Sandoval, the kindly baker, whose eldest son had died in the past year’s battle, held back when the gang at the mill wrestled him to the floor, white with spilled flour. 

He’d been petrified with fear and remembered little of the encounter. Rumple had retreated, far far back into his mind, back to months passed and the wooden platform in the main square of the capital, the smell of blood and iron rust from the chains and the mallet with the five spikes in it, nicknamed “the hand of justice” raised high against the sun…

In comparison the villagers had been gentle. They had really only wanted to see for themselves. They’d yanked his gloves off first—but this was something he’d foreseen and planned for. 

The day after his punishment and escape from the mob, he’d stolen the first cattle brand he saw to burn over the tell-tale coward’s “C” and the skin had healed over into as unidentifiable a pattern as could’ve been hoped for. Even if the location was still somewhat suspect, he could still pass it off as a gunpowder burn.

But then they rolled up the cuff of his trouser leg and pulled off his sock and all the pain and effort he’d gone through to obscure the truth dissolved into that much uselessness. The touch of the “hand of justice” was unmistakable.

From then on the door to the healer’s house was closed to him and all compassion firmly rescinded. 

And now things were as he had secretly feared. Without a healer’s interference the bones had ossified into an ungainly stiff shape. 

Each week on market day, he would still stretch it out with his hands and press it into a shoe, and tie the laces quickly before the foot sprang back to its new, curled-in form. This became harder and harder to do as the months wore on. Muscles and tendons stiffened as they rearranged themselves into their new permenant shape, so that now his twisted foot curled in on itself like a hard, inflexible fist. 

It was as Rumple had feared. It had been hard enough the week before, but he could still twist it in so the boot didn’t fall off, but only just barely.   
But now, though it no longer hurt much, he couldn’t straighten it out long   
enough to get even the loosest shoe on. Still he tried to hold it down into the correct shape with one hand, while trying to get the boot on with the other. It was maddeningly frustrating work but there was absolutely no way he was going to ask Milah for help. He could just imagine what she’d say. 

“Papa no fit boot?” asked a high piping voice. “Oh no, oh no. Papa hurt. Mama!”

“Hush Bae, it’s alright, I’m fine,” he whispered rapidly.

“Come along boys, what are you dawdling for?”

Rumple managed to get half his foot in the boot, even if the rest wouldn’t go and then tied the laces up around his ankle in a complicated series of knots over his thick sock and wrapped it up in puttees as they did in the army to keep out the cold. It wasn’t perfect, but he reckoned it would hold. 

He was so consumed with his own anger and frustration that he only noticed Bae’s tiny hand on his shoulder a second after it landed there.   
Rumple sighed as he looked over at his son’s wide brown eyes with their long dark lashes. How someone like him could’ve been part of the creation of someone so beautiful, he’d never know.

“Wanna know some’ing?” asked Bae.  
“Aye, what is it son?”   
Bae bent down over his ear and said in a rather loud whisper, “Bae love Papa!” Then he skipped away, covering his mouth and giggling. 

Rumple watched him go, completely bemused by his son’s two year old mindset, so beautiful in its love and joy. 

“What happens to us?” he asked out loud, without quite realizing it.

“Well, if we’re late, that witch of a herb-seller’s going to take our spot,” said Milah with a rare smile. She reached out her arm to Rumple and helped him to his feet. “Come on partner.”

He grinned. It was nice to experience her in a good mood for a change. She was always beautiful to him, but when she smiled it was impossible not to catch her instinctual joie de vivre, the passion and intensity with which she embraced everything in life, so different than his own instinct to hold back and be wary. They balanced each other out, he thought while he sorted his own balance out, getting his crutches up under him for the plough through the snow to the market.


	5. The Masque of Anarchy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst and mask-work. Sorry, not sorry. Title reference to my current favourite poem by Percy Byshe Shelley.
> 
> XXXXXXX

That was the thing about winter. It was always such a hassle with the extra cltohes and the treacherous ground, so unfriendly to his sticks, and the cold seeping in and stiffening his badly mended bones. But once they were properly outside and he could see the sun shining up high in out the crisp blue blue sky and the thin layer of new snow sparkling on the ground like icing sugar his mood lightened up considerably. 

He couldn’t help but notice how lovely Milah looked in the cold air, her cheeks pink, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. She loved to be outside in the fresh air having adventures, the wind pinking her cheeks a lovely rosy hue, her eyes on the clouds on the horizon, multicoloured puffs as the sun came up, more beautiful than anything conjoured by any magic. 

Rumple put Bae in the little harness he’d made for him and looped the string around his own wrist so Bae could toddle about without wandering too far. Milah pushed the cart with the spinning wheel in it in front of her, making good speed and Rumple and Bae followed along as best they could in the rear.

Today he was able to make decent time. The ground wasn’t as bad as he’d worried it would be and soon he had a good head of steam on, keeping pace beside Milah. Secretly, he felt rather chuffed by this. She never slowed down and in the beginning, when he first returned it had been impossible for him to keep up. Now he was surprised to find that even as his mind still struggled to accept his reduced circumstances two years later, his body had adapted, other parts strengthening to compensate for the weakened limb. 

 

A lone bird sang cheerful from the bare branches of the trees in the apple orchard by the mill as they went past and Rumple whistled back. Bae giggled and he could even see a smile break through the determined set of Milah’s jaw as she pushed the cart. 

If there was one thing he knew he could still do, it was make her laugh, especially when he was in a good mood. The jests came easily when she was receptive. His bird song whistle soon turned into a bawdy tavern song he knew she would recognize. He was rewarded by a sudden giggle as she cottoned on to what he was doing. 

“Oh you naughty man,” she huffed in mock scandal. She tried to give him a light thwack with the tasseled end of her shawl, but he twisted and hopped away like a sparrow, the tassels fwapping fruitlessly in the air.

“Trickster!” came her throaty growl and he grinned as he dipped a shallow bow. 

“The very same!” He laughed, a high twittering sound, the way he had once at a Solistice Festival years long ago, in their yearly masque as Lizard the Trickster, King of Summer. 

And he really had felt the Summer King that season. For once in his life, the gods seemed to smile down on him and bless him with his hearts’ every desire. He had taken Milah to bed that summer, too, the first maiden to ever bestow her favours upon him. She’d told him once how she’d first fallen in love with him, not even knowing it was him, as he chanelled the spirit of Lizard the Trickster.

And he sang the Summer King’s song now, the one he used to trick Lord Winter off his throne, a bawdy ballad about the Winter Princess gone down to the taverns in the land below to cavort with the sons of men. Of course, it wasn’t true, not a line of it, but the Lord Winter couldn’t help but abandon his throne to see for himself. 

“Oh Rumplestilskin stop! You naughty thing!”

And this gave him pause, for he hadn’t corrected her when she used the false, demeaning name in the past, but strangely, emboldened by the spirit of the cocky Lizard he said, “No, no, you know that’s not my real name.”

“The Mayor said we’re not to call you by your given name anymore. I could get in trouble.”

“But the Mayor isn’t here.”

“Maybe I’ve forgotten it then.”

“Then I’ll remind you, my darling. Gareth, my true name. Or you may call me your majesty, King of Summer. Your choice, of course!” He winked and spun away from her, hopping up the path with Bae at his heels, hoping she’d take the more than subtle hint. 

He stopped and turned to look over his shoulder. Her cheeks were pink as she pushed the cart faster, her eyes large, shocked and startled and maybe just a touch aroused. He cocked his hip at her like the Summer King would and then…Then he heard a loud thump and turned to look down. 

The other shoe had literally dropped and whatever threadbare glamour the persona of the Trickster had briefly imbdued him with-- it evaporated at that instant.


	6. Show me the way to Go Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh yeah... so did I say Milah was not completely unsympathetic. Um, so sorry, maybe I should change that tag because in this chapter she is kind of a massive dick. 
> 
> My God, ouch! My poor, poor characters! Why do I torture them so? Seriously, why do I do it? This is like George R. Martin levels of characters being emotionally tortured here, (though without the corresponding gore or icky under-age rapey-ness). Please rest assured that I love poor Rumple and he WILL find his way out of this sad time! 
> 
> When he's off-set from this story I am making sure to hug him lots to help combat some of the trauma this drama is putting him through. I've also been giving him lots of fortifying compliments so he doesn't suffer permenant damage to his self-esteem as recommended by the on-set therapist I employ for such occasions. I've also allowed him lots of hot relaxing soaks in my imaginary hot tub (TM) to help with the leg situation. 
> 
> So basically, no actually Rumples were harmed in the making of this fic.
> 
> So now you can enjoy the angst-fest guilt-free!
> 
> Also, chapter title comes courtesy of what movie? Movie trivia loving readers see if you know!
> 
>  
> 
> XXXXXXXX

The other shoe had literally dropped and whatever threadbare glamour the persona of the Trickster had briefly imbdued him with-- it evaporated at that instant. 

Rumple licked his lips nervously and tried to reach down for the boot where he’d dropped it without success.

He swore under his breath. If he had to lower himself down to get it, Milah was bound to notice. Luckily, Bae was close at hand. 

“Heh Bae, could you pick that up for Daddy?” Bae picked the boot out of a patch of mud and brought it over. Rumple took it gratefully and rubbed the worst of the mud off on his trousers. “Good lad. Such a big boy.”

Unfortunately, Rumple now faced the dilemma of how to get the shoe back on. It would take him too long to sit and get back up again he reasoned and perhaps if he just put it in his knapsack and kept on walking after Milah, she wouldn’t look back and notice. Then when they got to market and her attention was distracted with setting up the stand, he could sit down on a proper chair and get the blasted thing back on. 

He swung the pack down off his back and spoke gently but hurriedly to Bae. “Now just help Papa get the buckle undone and open the pack. That’s a good lad.”

Baelfire fumbled with the stiff buckle, unable to undo it. “Sowwy Papa.”

“It’s alright. I’ll have a go.” Rumple shifted on his sticks to get a hand free. His arms felt nearly numb from the elbow down what with all his recent crutching about. He flexed his fingers in their fingerless gloves, trying to get the blood flowing again. Then he handed the boot off to Bae and attacked the buckle, in a desperate bid to get the pack open as quickly as possible. 

But Milah had already noticed something was amiss. She rested the handcart on the ground and began to backtrack up the hill.

“What’s the hold up? Why are we stopping?” 

Finally, the buckle gave way. “There, now Bae give me the boot.”

“What’s going on here?”  
Startled Bae turned, still hold the boot with both hands.  
“Papa wost shoe.” 

“Seriously?” she searched Rumple’s face for the truth, but he merely ducked his head away. “How can one person be so completely rubbish at everything single thing? Are you really that lazy or have you just completely given up caring what people think? If you won’t even try to keep up appearances for yourself, why can’t you at least do it for me! You think I asked for any of this? You were the one who was stupid enough to run and stupid enough to get caught, but here I’m the one bearing the brunt of the humiliation!”

“Oh yes,” he gritted out, “poor you.”

Her eyes flashed with fire as she took the boot from Bae. “We need to be at the market already.” 

“It’s fine, we’ve made good time so far. Just put the boot in my sack and I’ll put it back on in town where I can sit down good and proper.” 

He hopped forward, but Milah blocked his way.

“Maybe you shouldn’t come.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you’re not ashamed of yourself, then trust me, I have enough for the both of us. How can you walk into town looking like some ragamuffin scarecrow, all covered in mud, one shoe on and one shoe off? As if we weren’t the butt of every jest in the village already? I mean look at the state of you!”

“But I’m the one who spins the wool! Customers want to know who they’re buying from!” 

“Not when it’s you they don’t. You think they want to be reminded of what you did? How you left those others out there to die?”

“I didn’t—“

“It doesn’t matter. You’re no use here. Go home Rumple.”

His shoulders sagged over his sticks in defeat, but then, with the ghost of the Summer King’s defiance, he glared back up at her, eyes dark and angry. 

“No, that’s not my name. It’s—“

“Gareth, or the the Trickster King, I know you said and now I’m saying to you ‘go home your majesty, go back to your palace, dismissed!” she admonished him with a courtly wave and a mocking tone that cut worse than the freezing wind. 

When he looked up at her then, to let her see the hurt in his expression, in hopes of some apology, of a breathy—“oh you silly, don’t take it to heart, it’s just a joke”— and a consiliatory arm around his shoulders, she only narrowed her eyes at him, irises blue-gray in the winter light as chips of flint. “Trickster King, bah! For surely you tricked me, when I was young and silly and my head was turned by fantasies. All your fancy talk of being a tailor in the capital, all lies and empty promises!” 

“They weren’t empty!

“Really? You’re going buy me a house in the capital now? With what? This old boot?” She threw it at him in frustration. He didn’t even bother trying to catch it, just let it bounce off his chest and land back in the muck. It wasn’t worth it. 

“Bad Mama!” cried Bae, his high pitched voice, indignant. “No throw!”

“And now you’ve turned him against me too into the bargain, lovely.” Milah turned away, hunched her shoulders over the cart and began to push. 

Pulling Bae along on his string, Rumple hurried to follow her down the hill, but she turned again. There were tears in her eyes, as she looked at him.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be around you today.”

“But—“

“Just take Baelfire home.”

“Milah let’s just—“

“Please Gareth.” The tears fell leaving pink tracks on her cheeks. Years ago he would’ve reached up a finger to catch them before they fell and chilled her porcelain skin. Now he stood with Bae as she turned back to the path, pushing the cart down the hill, quicker than he could safely follow. 

He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much, the way she’d used his name that one time without prompting, but deep inside where he didn’t have to admit it to himself a part of him knew. 

When she didn’t turn up that night or the day after or the day after that, he wasn’t entirely surprised. 

It was ages before he heard another person speak his true name again.


End file.
